Forums > Contributor Zone > Review of the Week 8/8 - 8/14: "Everything is on the left now."

Oh well, late I am again. Yeah, I pulled a little overtime this week, plus I've started a new work schedule that means clocking in two hours later and getting home by about 2 AM. As you can imagine, I'm exhausted.

Well, that's enough excuses.


THIRD PLACE
otokonomiyaki's Abzu (PlayStation 4)
As you mentioned, it's typically poor form to compare one title to another. I think there are acceptable occasions, and this review demonstrates one of them. Your descriptions of Journey helped clarify what Abzu had to offer without propping the former up as an arbitrary standard, and I appreciate that. Your examples and descriptions are also terrific, including those about the sea life. That alone piqued my interest and had me doing a little math in my head to see if I can justify $20 vs. what's in my bank account vs. what the wife will say when she finds out I spent $20 on a PSN download vs. dude, the next phone bill is going to be insane, so don't spend any money.

Cash conservation won in the end. However, your review left me trying to rationalize spending money, and that's a good thing. I think...


SECOND PLACE
honestgamers' Road to Ballhalla (PC)
Reviewing puzzle and physics-based action games is the pits. Not only are you worried about describing the game properly, but also preventing your audience from clicking the 'back' button out of boredom. This review succeeds in doing just that. There's a lot of good humor and self-deprecation in this piece, particularly mentioning that you're not very good at the game and tend to die a lot. I think my favorite part was when you mentioned the rating system and how you didn't mind scoring a low end 2 or 3 rating, stating "In general, my contentment with mediocrity worked just fine." I don't know about other readers, but I chuckled and said, "Story of my life." Great stuff!


REVIEW OF THE WEEK
Suskie's Inside (PC)
Playdead's new game isn't so good, huh? I guess that figures.

I liked that you described Limbo without giving the reader a huge run down of what that game was like. After reading this review, I knew how both titles worked. I think best of all is that you support your opinion with great examples and tell us why this game's reluctance to stray from its predecessor's formula while failing to build on it in any meaningful way is its undoing. I'm also glad that you called out some of the cheap, easy devices the developer used. Totalitarian governments are bad, you say? Because there aren't dozens of other works of fiction that already spell that out for us? In a way, I felt like you were trying to say that the game is lazily made without explicitly saying that it was lazy. Good approach.

I liked the clever touches the review had, too. They weren't giggle-worthy, as Jason's were in his review, but they made an already slick review more enjoyable.

The only thing my milkshake brings to the yard is a subpoena.

I never finished Limbo (GASP!). I got quite near the end, but the game felt like it had run out of steam after the giant spider chase cooled off and you were left to fight a dull static factory setting thing instead. Marc said this in a review once - he stole the concept from me. Where was I going with this? Oh, right. Because Limbo was almost very good, I always kept half an eye on what would come next for the developer. Glad I lost track of that one.

Good work, Joe. Props to the gang.

For us. For them. For you.